By then I was fifteen, and things hadn’t improved. That week Mama had still been in bed every day when I got home from school, either crying or asleep. I could tell she must have got up at some point during the day to eat by the mess she left in the kitchen, which I tidied away every night when I got home so that it didn’t smell too much and to try to give Mama one less thing to be upset about. But it didn’t work, of course – she was still always crying.

I was getting back later and later from school because home was so depressing to deal with. Sometimes I went to friends’ houses for the night, but I didn’t want their parents to start asking too many questions because it got embarrassing. When I was younger I used to ask Anna and the various psychotherapists she used to send me to why Mama was the way she was. All they ever said was variations on the fact that it wasn’t my fault or her fault, that it was just the way her brain was wired that sometimes made it difficult for her to cope. Which was no answer at all really, and certainly no help to anyone, least of all me.

As kids go, I was pretty good and not hard to deal with, I thought. I did OK at school, I didn’t smoke or drink, I didn’t bunk off school. Not that half the time Mama would have noticed if I did do any of those things. Sometimes when Mama had had a particularly bad episode and gone missing or done things like slashed her arms with the kitchen knife and I’d ended up at Rhonda’s yet again, I would ask Anna why they kept sending me back to Mama if she couldn’t cope. She’d say that it was natural that Mama wanted me home, but they only sent me back when they were sure she could manage and it was Mama’s right to have me with her where possible but that they always acted in my best interests.

It was difficult to see how.

By the time I got back from school via Callie’s and the park that night it was almost dark outside and there were no lights on in the house. I guessed Mama must still be in bed – I silently prayed that she’d be asleep rather than wailing and crying as sometimes she was when I got home. I was tired and not in the mood for her drama. Asleep, she was easier to deal with.